Walnut Creek Baptist Church

Walnut Creek's age is counted two ways. KLTV reported the congregation celebrating 175 years in June 2025, and said it bought 17 acres for church and cemetery in 1886; the plaque puts both in the 1850s. The church sat in the farming settlement of Graceton, where G. H. Baird's 1946 county history says L. S. Covin bought a section in 1866 and a Methodist church was organized first. The 1920s sanctuary served about fifty years before the 1978 buildings, and the old church still stands.

What the plaque says

Walnut Creek Baptist Church Pioneer settlers of this area formally organized a Baptist Church of Christ at Walnut Creek about 1855. In 1856 the congregation acquired more than 17 acres here on which they built a sanctuary and established a cemetery. The oldest marked grave dates to 1870. The congregation expanded its facilities over the years to provide Sunday School services, a parsonage, and to accommodate a growing membership. A new brick sanctuary was erected near this site in 1978. The church continues to support a variety of ministries, maintain the historic cemetery, and serve the local community. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 19 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 23 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 23 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 25 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• Simmons Hill Baptist Church — 3.2 mi
• Site of Stamps School — 3.6 mi
• Port Bolivar & Iron Ore Railroad — 4.5 mi
• Site of the Guarantee State Bank — 4.5 mi